Computing: More

Current Reading

The Net Impact of Netbooks? It Depends on Who Uses Them for What — These small devices are a bright side to what analysts expect will be a slow year ahead for computer demand. Knowledge@Wharton Magazine

A Mossberg on Reader Friendly Software

We've linked to Walter Mossberg's WSJ columns (which are available to the non-subscribing Internet public) for years but a recent one on 'Making the Internet a Little Easier on Aging Eyes' is particularly noteworthy:

This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested a cheaper, simpler solution that's just aimed at making the Web easier to read. It's a $19.95 downloadable software program for Windows users called Web Eyes, from a Missouri firm called Ion Systems. The program can be downloaded from the webeyes.us site, or for $29.95 the company will mail it to you. Web Eyes embeds itself into Internet Explorer (versions 5.5 and up) and adds a special toolbar to the top of the browser. This toolbar includes options for changing a Web site's text size and navigating through a page that go far beyond what Microsoft offers. But its most interesting feature is one that reformats a whole page for easier reading.

Katie and I each downloaded a free 15-day trial of Web Eyes and used it while reading online throughout the past week. Overall, we found the product useful and easy to apply to every Web site that we tested.

To adjust the font of any article, we clicked on the red plus and minus buttons in the toolbar to enlarge or shrink text size accordingly. Using the plus and minus signs, font size can be adjusted up to 144-point type; you can also manually enter any font size that you want. While reading an especially long article from Slate.com, Katie increased the type size by clicking the "plus" sign twice and could sit back in her office chair while reading.

I tested Web Eyes on a long article at the Web site of the magazine U.S. News & World Report. The text size feature of Internet Explorer had no effect on the small type of this particular page. But Web Eyes blew it up to any size I liked, and the enlarged text remained smooth and sharp, with none of the jagged effects produced by the built-in Windows Magnifier.

I also liked another feature of Web Eyes, called Page Control, which allows you to easily and rapidly pan and scroll through pages with a few mouse clicks.

Read the entire article on Mossberg's Site.

The Case of the Killer Robot

Silicon Valley Programmer Indicted for Manslaughter;
Program Error Caused Death by Robot

by Mabel Muckraker

Jane McMurdock, prosecuting attorney for the city of Silicon Valley, announced today the indictment of Randy Samuels on charges of manslaughter. Samuels was formerly employed as a programmer at Silicon Techtronics Inc., one of Silicon Valley's newest entries into the high-tech arena. The charge involves the death of Bart Matthews, who was killed last May by an assembly-line robot.

Matthews worked as a robot operator at Cybernetics Inc., in Silicon Heights. He was crushed to death when the robot he was operating malfunctioned and started to wave its "arm" violently. The robot arm struck Matthews, throwing him against a wall and crushing his skull. Matthews died almost instantly. The case has shocked and angered many in Silicon Valley. According to the indictment, Samuels wrote the particular piece of computer program responsible for the robot malfunction.

"There's a smoking gun!" McMurdock announced triumphantly at a press conference held in the Hall of Justice. "We have the handwritten formula, provided by the project physicist, which Samuels was supposed to program. But, he negligently misinterpreted the formula, leading to this gruesome death. Society must protect itself against programmers who make careless mistakes or else no one will be safe, least of all our families and our children."

The Sentinel-Observer has obtained a copy of the handwritten formula in question. There are actually three similar formulas, scrawled on a piece of yellow legal pad paper. Each formula describes the motion of the robot arm in one direction: east-west, north-south and up-down. The Sentinel-Observer showed the formulas to Bill Park, a professor of physics at Silicon Valley University. He confirmed that these equations could be used to describe the motion of a robot arm. The Sentinel-Observer then showed Park the program code, written by the accused in the C programming language. We asked Park, who is fluent in C and several other languages, whether the program code was correct for the given robot-arm formulas.

Park's response was immediate. He exclaimed, "By Jove! It looks like he misinterpreted the y-dots in the formulas as y-bars, and he made the same mistake for the x's and the z's. He was supposed to use the derivatives, but he took the averages instead. He's guilty as hell, if you ask me."

From the introduction and cast of characters section of an online theoretical ethics case at the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science.

The Case of the Killer Robot consists of seven newspaper articles, one journal article and one magazine interview. This scenario is intended to raise issues of computer ethics and software engineering. The people and institutions involved in this scenario are entirely fictitious (except for references to Carnegie Mellon and Purdue universities and to the venerable computer scientists Ben Shneiderman and Jim Foley). Silicon Valley was chosen as the location for the accident because it is an icon of high technology.

Viruses

The latest virus to cause widespread concern is one aptly named Blaster. To find instructions to manually delete the W32/Blaster worm, consult the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Cente r operated by Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute: www.cert.org/tech_tips/w32_blaster.html. A Microsoft toll-free help line can be reached at 866-PC-SAFETY. In a number of cases, victims of the worm's operations have not been able to connect to the Microsoft website long enough to download the instructions for a fix nor to the antivirus companies' website to download methods to eliminate the virus.

The systems affected are: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Video Communicating

For over four years we've been communicating with our grandchildren using a form of video equipment attached to our computers. We've used an Intel Create and Share camera product and now we're acquiring a webcam compatible with a Yahoo Messaging system. We recommend it for those of you who would like to see your friends and family and they, in turn, be able to view you — in bathrobe or with props in hand to amuse grandchildren.

"Video communication over the Web is not just for techno-geeks anymore. In fact, it's quietly become one of the hottest Internet applications going — with 18 million webcam users and rising — thanks to the increased use of broadband and free instant-messaging software that supports video. Admittedly, there's still a long way to go: True full-motion video has a frame rate of at least 24 frames per second, and most consumer services come up a little short. Power-users may want to opt for more capable Web-conferencing solutions, provided by third-party hosting companies for a fee. No matter what your needs are, there are now a bevy of options to choose from."

Computing/Robots

Ever since our youth, we've been tantalized by the idea of robots transforming our lives. Some say that the term robot came from the Czech word robota, meaning work, while others propose that robota actually means forced workers or slaves. There are even doll robots called robotas.

Two gecko-inspired robots built by IRobot can zoom up glass windows using some of the lizard's agility. The newer one, called the Bull-Gecko, runs on adhesive-covered tank treads that roll on like gecko toes. The Director of IRobot's Research is Dr. Polly Pook, sporting robot hands in a picture we found, after being intrigued by her mission (and name). She and Helen Grenier are alums of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and seek to find a better understanding of the biomechanics of animals helping design more capable robots.

But geckos may be out and scorpions in . In 2002, a robotic scorpion will try to make its way 80 kilometres across the Mojave desert in California, using little more than programmed automatic reflexes to survive. Wonder if those television Survivor know about this?

Computing/ God Games

The New York Times titles the review of the new God game, Black & White, as "A Deity in touch With His Own Bad Self. " Of course, there have been others: Afterlife, Pharaoh (Build a Kingdom, Rule the Nile, Live Forever) including a Pharaoh music jukebox requiring MP3 files; Zeus: Master of Olympus (one fan comments on his Homeresque blunders), Build a Better Rome (Caesar commands that you create, rule and defend an Imperial Roman city of your own design) etc.

Relating God games to applications in literature is another way to explore the fascination with the phenomenon. As a Well user (see Meeting Places) puts it: "To be a god, at least to be a creative one, one must relinquish control and embrace uncertainty."

Well put.

Article

"Call me Percy. It’s short for “personal computer” and usually I loathe nicknames. I mean really. But Percy is different. It has a note of distinction, don’t you think? And one can’t go around being known as “PC,” can one?

Until a year ago, I was the happiest of computers. I worked for a distinguished professor of literature at Princeton University. He not only used me to prepare his lectures, but he also wrote book reviews that were absolute models of erudition and scholarship. I mean apart from the insight I gained from his writing, I never had to repair his punctuation or grammar and his spelling was impeccable. And the sheer intellectual stimulation brought me to consciousness.

But all that part of my life is over now."

My Life and Hard Drive

Links

About.com - A collection of 700 categories organized by human (rather than search engine) guides. Each topic has articles linked from other sites, as well as links grouped under the appropriate topic. SeniorWomenWeb has three articles on the site currently: Betty Soldz's article on Women and Heart Disease and Deborah Gray's articles on On-line Dating Tips and Buying and Selling on E-Bay.

Argus Clearinghouse - A Librarian-directed site that is a central access for topical guides which identify, describe, and evaluate Internet-based information resources.

Bookmark Overload - The New York Times listed a number of sites to manage your bookmarks. Backflip.com - It's possible to use alphabetical sorting as well as sorting by the most recent bookmarks added. One plus is also indicating which ten pages you use most frequently.

The satirical site, Brains Trust, has been dubbed the British son of The Onion, another satirical site we've linked to previously. The Most Comments section, part of the Archive, delivers a selection of their back issues. Of course it has an overwhelmingly British slant and is guilty of poor taste at times but it's a welcome counterpoint to the real news.

Center for Democracy and Technology - The center is concerned with "building consensus among those interested in the future of the Internet, finding common ground among activists, nonprofit groups, Internet businesses and government policy makers." Jerry Berman, the Executive Director, was chief legislative counsel of the ACLU, directing their Project on Privacy and Information Technology and previously a director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The site has sections dealing with access to information or 'your right to know', terrorism, wiretapping, encryption, bandwidth, privacy rights and free speech.

CNET.com Help Site -Tips and answers to a wide selection of computing problems and questions provided by answers drawn from Usenet newsgroups. Main categories are Hardware, Software, Internet, Web Building, Consumer Electronic and Games. Post your own question to the user community if you can't find an answer to your particular situation using the searching facility.

Computer Guidelines and Etiquette - Netiquette Guidelines - RFC 1855 is the document drawn up by the Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The document consists of specifications that organizations can use to create their own guidelines as well as being useful for individuals. For ethics issues, consult the Computer Ethics Institute: members of the IT professions and the academic, corporate and public policy communities are represented by the Brookings Institution, IBM, the Washington Consulting Group and the Washington Theological Consortium. On the opening age you'll find the ten commandments of computer ethics.

Cybercrime.gov - Department of Justice offers advice on protection against hackers and to report Internet crimes. There are links to Web pages on issues such as encryption and electronic privacy. The section n Internet crimes makes note of the agencies who handle which specific type of crime. There's also a section dealing with questions and answers regarding prosecution of gambling and the Internet.

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Maintained by a privacy advocacy group, the site has up to the minute information about online incursions and issues.

Electronic Privacy Information Center - This public interest research center in Washington, D.C. was established in 1994 to "focus public attention on civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values. The site also contains information on how to get PGP, RSA SecurPC, and other encryption programs, anonymous remailers and surfing the net anonymously as well as Includes resources on critical infrastructure protection.

Google Search engine - The search engine we use most frequently. The analysis used to produce pages related to your topic are in most cases, determined by what those pages linking to that page have to say about it. Obviously, they also use text-matching techniques from your search, too.

HotBraille - This is a free service that translates messages into Braille and sends them by regular mail. It also offers lessons for those who want to create their own Braille correspondence.

Pandia.com - Another search engine, created and maintained by P&S Koch of Oslo, Norway with an Internet search tutorial.

Purportal - A service that allows searching on four different sites to determine the truth of an Internet rumor. The site includes Snopes Urban Legends Archives, CIAC Hoax Database, Symantec (Real) Virus Encyclopedia and About.com Urban Legends. There are many other resources available from the home page, too, that you can use for scams, frauds, etc.

Walter Mossberg's Mailbox and Columns - The Wall Street Journal Columnist who has become an 'everyman' of tech gurus; I laughed out loud on my commuter train reading his column on the difficulties of linking two or more home PCs together, a problem my own home-based techies (husband and daughters) had grappled with after being assured by the software manufacturer that it was a snap.

Refdesk.com - A compilation of over 20,000 links to reference sites such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, U. S. statistics, college rankings, journalists' tools, a Reuters' news feed, both domestic and foreign newspapers, magazines, search engines, a FEMA storm watch, columnists, tax help guides, tech news and many other essential reference sites.

Harvard RSI Action Page - This is not a Harvard Medical School website; it's produced by students for students but if you have or think you have repetitive stress injury and nowadays it's most likely from computer use, this site is well worth a look for preventive measures and advice.

Search Engine Colossus - This service has links to country- or region-specfic search engines organized by country with a link to the languages(s) used based on eleven general categories such as Academic, Business, Medical and Sports.

Search IQ - A rather unique component of this collection of search engines is specialized engines, organized by subject which surely should reduce time and eliminate marginal sites.

The Scout Report - Provides invaluable and superior information about the Internet to the research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation. Through a review of sites by the staff located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, you can find links such as an 'in the news' section that focusses on current world events, historical and personality sites, white papers, special report for science and engineering, arts sources and so on. I've used it for sources to include at the website and am proud that they've reviewed SeniorWomenWeb favorably.

Security Threats - Actually this is titled: How To Eliminate the 20 Most Critical Internet Security Threats: The Experts' Consensus. A mouthful put together by a cooperative research and education organization of system admins, academics, security professionals and network admins. As they note: "The majority of successful attacks on computer systems via the Internet can be traced to exploitation of one of a small number of security flaws." They also add that this is a living document. It includes initial, step-by-step instructions and pointers for correcting the flaws. They'll update the instructions as more current or convenient methods are identified and they welcome your input. This is quite technical so if you're not familiar enough with your own computer to run/check out these tests, have someone who is familiar with your systems check it for vulnerabilities.

UGEEK - Don't put off by the name; you're not expected to compete... or is that compute... with the true geeks. Here's their quick test to tell if you want to join geekamania: "Took things apart as a child to see how they worked; have always had some interest in electronic devices; were fascinated by how the television remote control worked; can program the VCR; enjoy trying to teach yourself how to use things." The site is easy to navigate with updates regarding products along with reviews, tips and shortcuts for users, a techie glossary and levels of proficiency to make your journey progressive. Then, again, many of you have been using computers longer than some of the 'geeks', so don't hold back. It's possible to contribute to the Rants and Raves and Tales From the Geekside.

Virus Information and Hoaxes (F-Secure): One of our daughters sent me this address when I was alerted to a possible new virus which turned out to be a hoax. Another source to check out when you receive a notice or e-mail of a possible virus is the ever-popular: Urban Legends.